"To many, it came as a surprise that the RCMP is alleging that two
terror suspects arrested in Canada on Monday were supported by al-Qaeda
operatives in Iran.

The Sunni-based al-Qaeda and Shia Iran belong
to different branches of Islam that have been at odds historically. But
in recent years U.S. officials have formally alleged that Iran has
allowed al-Qaeda members to operate out of its territory."

Both at face value and upon deeper examination, this assertion is utterly absurd, divorced from reality, and indicative of the absolute contempt within which the Western establishment holds the global public. In reality, the West, the US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel in particular, have propped up and perpetuated Al Qaeda for the very purpose of either undermining or overthrowing the governments of Iran, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Algeria, Libya, Russia, Malaysia, Indonesia, and beyond.

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush
Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in
the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with
Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations
that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is
backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations
aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has
been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant
vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

The Administration may have been willing to rely on dissident
organizations in Iran even when there was reason to believe that the
groups had operated against American interests in the past. The use of
Baluchi elements, for example, is problematic, Robert Baer, a former
C.I.A. clandestine officer who worked for nearly two decades in South
Asia and the Middle East, told me. “The Baluchis are Sunni
fundamentalists who hate the regime in Tehran, but you can also describe
them as Al Qaeda,” Baer told me. “These are guys who cut off the heads
of nonbelievers—in this case, it’s Shiite Iranians. The irony is that
we’re once again working with Sunni fundamentalists, just as we did in
Afghanistan in the nineteen-eighties.” Ramzi Yousef, who was convicted
for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed, who is considered one of the leading planners of the
September 11th attacks, are Baluchi Sunni fundamentalists.

The report would continue by stating (emphasis added):

One of the most active and violent anti-regime groups in Iran today is
the Jundallah, also known as the Iranian People’s Resistance Movement,
which describes itself as a resistance force fighting for the rights of
Sunnis in Iran. “This is a vicious Salafi organization whose followers
attended the same madrassas as the Taliban and Pakistani extremists,”
Nasr told me. “They are suspected of having links to Al Qaeda and they
are also thought to be tied to the drug culture.” The Jundallah took
responsibility for the bombing of a busload of Revolutionary Guard
soldiers in February, 2007. At least eleven Guard members were killed.
According to Baer and to press reports, the Jundallah is among the
groups in Iran that are benefitting from U.S. support.

The manifestation of this insidious conspiracy can be seen playing out across Syria in which US-backed terrorists openly operating under the flag of Al Qaeda are locked in a catastrophic sectarian bloodbath with the Syrian people and the Syrian state's closest ally, Iran. The conflict in Syria exposes that the machinations revealed back in 2007-2008 by Hersh, are still being carried out in earnest today.

Clearly, US-Canadian claims that Iran is somehow involved in harboring Al Qaeda within its borders, when it has been the West for years propping them up specifically to overthrow the Iranian government, are utterly absurd. In reality, while the West uses Al Qaeda's presence both within Iran and along it peripheries to undermine and ultimately overthrow the Iranian government, it in turn uses these very terror organizations to induce paralyzing fear across Western populations in order to consolidate and expand power at home.